Basar now suffers mobility issues due to his advanced age.

Borneo Post : LAWAS (Feb 18): Basar Paru was among the heroic border scouts who patrolled Long Semadoh during the confrontation with Indonesia and communist insurgency. He committed 10 years of his life to defending Sarawak and the then new nation of Malaysia.

However, Basar, who will turn 92 in June, still has the unfulfilled dream of being granted Malaysian citizenship. His plight is shared by three other former border scouts, who like Basar have continued to be denied the citizenship of the country they defended nearly six decades ago. Born in 1930 in a village just across the border in Kalimantan, Indonesia, Basar first visited relatives in Long Beluyuk, near Ba Kelalan as a teenager. It was there that he would meet his bride and where he would ultimately settle with his family in the late 1950s – prior to the formation of Malaysia in 1963.

Basar’s daughter Orpah related how her father has now become disheartened after many trips to the National Registration Department (JPN) over the years to seek citizenship have resulted in nothing. “The only dream that is left for my father in his life is for him to be recognised as a Malaysian, not only for his service as a border scout during the Indonesian Confrontation in 1963, but more importantly he has family, children and grandchildren, who are all Malaysians.

“He had applied many times in the past with many trips to JPN Lawas and JPN Miri. Only in 2013 he was given permanent resident status or MyPR,” she told The Borneo Post today, adding that she and her siblings are hoping to fulfill their father’s final dream.